Playlists not showing up on a NAS device.

[Sloop John B]

I have moved my iTunes library to a NAS (buffalo linkstation)

Everything works fine and UniQute can see all the music but not the playlists.
Is there a way to get these playlists onto the NAS or even saving new ones on it? All I seem to have in the playlists folder is most played and most popular
playlists

Thanks

 

[garyi]

Mr John please explain how your itunes library is on the NAS?

1. You have copied the entire library called itunes to the NAS and have use a hard link to it for itunes.
2. You have copied just the music folder and told itunes thats where it is.
3. You have copied just the music and turned on the NASes 'itunes server' so it appears in itunes
4.You have copied over the music and turned on UPNP so the qute can see it.

AFAIK playlists are a part of the itunes database, so may well not be understood by the qute.

 

[Sloop John B]

I have copied the entire iTunes music folder (where all my music is stored). I have pointed iTunes to this folder a iTunes sees it and works fine.
As you correctly deduce the NAS is a UPNP server and streams to the Qute.
The NAS shows up the folder structure of the iTunes folder and has "playlists" listed bur these merely contain last played and most played lists.

If I can't get the iTunes playlist "seen" is there a way to populate this playlist?

Thanks

 

[garyi]

Hi John.

If you look back to where your itunes library lives by default you will see a new itunes library. (documents on PC I think)

Playlists etc are stored here, and will not be stored on the NAS.

Itunes be default store music in itunes on the local drive you need to specify to itunes that its somewhere else by going to prefs and advanced. If you do not do this then new music added will get put in default location of the local drive.

For total sanity I recommend copying the itunes MUSIC folder to the nas, not the entire folder. Then in advance settings point to this music folder.

What you have done is made your playlists defunct by putting them on the nas, itunes will save playlists in the default location on your local drive.

This is the problem you are probably running into with the qute.
The qute is only getting the UPNP info from the nas, which no doubt is ignoring the playlists as this is a database used by itunes.

I assume a qute can't see an itunes playlist unless the the NAS can dish up said playlist via UPNP, you would need to look in the nas settings for that. However the playlist will not be 'live' as itunes will save your new plalist to default local location.

This has been got round before with hardlinks. in essence you have the entire itunes folder on the nas and on the local default location have a symbolic link to it, as if it were the actual folder (standard shortcuts won't work)

This all goes seriously tits up though if the nas for what ever reason is not available when itunes opens.

 

[Sloop John B]

Thanks for your help.

I think the problem assuredly is the NAS after spending an afternoon googling and binging.

The iTunes playlists are on the NAS in the iTunes folder.

I've tried converting to m3u to no avail and wpl doesn't work either

It will be q shame if I can't use playlists but I'm stumped at the moment unless there is another Buffalo NAS user outrider who can help

 

[garyi]

Yea, thats out of my hands.

What I am trying to tell you though is the playlists on your nas will not be effected AFSIK by anything new you do in itunes. ie. itunes will put any new playlists on the local drive.

I could be wrong though.

 

[Sloop John B]

This is what worked for me to get my Itunes playlists onto the Buffalo NAS in order to be able to access them from the UniQute.


First of all something that caught me out. When I made a change to the NAS ie added a playlist or changed genre of tracks in tunes there was a 60 minute lag time until these changes were visible on the NAS through the UniQute or n-stream app. This caught me out as I thought what I was doing was having no effect. This interval can be changed in web admin > extensions > media server menu.


The NAS is automatically set up with a "share" folder. I put a folder in this called music and transferred my itunes Media folder (which contains all my music) to it and then pointed Itunes to this folder in Itunes preferences.

In Itunes with a playlist selected select file > Library> export playlist - choose m3u from the file options and export to the "music" folder.

Now this playlist is visible to the Uniqute (after the refresh delay)

If they are smart playtlists they will be "frozen" at the time you exported them to m3u format, they are not updated in real time.

I hope this helps someone else.



SJB